Not Much Movement in Share of Workers With Health-Care Coverage

If employers shifted the health-care benefits they offer workers much in the past year, such changes thus far appear to be more tweaks than sweeping overhauls. A report Wednesday from the Labor Department shows the health-benefits picture for U.S. workers changed little between March and the same month a year ago.

Associated Press

In March, 85% of full-time workers in private industry had access to medical care through their employers, compared with 86% in March 2012. The share of part-time workers offered such benefits from their employer held steady at 24%. Businesses with 100 or more workers were more likely to offer employee health benefits than smaller businesses, as was the case last year. And full-time state and local government workers continue to have greater access to employer-provided medical and retirement benefits than their counterparts in private industry.

The very slight changes in the report show that some concerns about the effect of the ACA on employer-provided health benefits aren’t warranted, said Paul Hughes-Cromwick, senior health economist at the Center for Sustainable Health Spending of theAltarum Institute. The Ann Arbor, Mich., nonprofit studies and consults on health systems. Although some companies “are perceiving the end of the world,” Mr. Hughes-Cromwick said. “I think this kind of stability runs counter to those sorts of fears.”

There’s been “zero change” in “big companies that have always led the way in providing decent health insurance,” Mr. Hughes-Cromwick said. The only slight takeaway from the report, he added, is employers seem to be paying a bit less for coverage, with employees are shouldering a hint more of the costs.

He warned against making anything more than general comparisons between the March 2013 and March 2012 snapshots. That is because so many factors in the survey pool shift from one year to the next, such as the companies polled, the health-care coverage they offer and the number of employees with access to those benefits.

Wednesday’s report is based on a Labor Department survey of close to 12,000 establishments in private industry as well as local and state governments. The survey represents almost 125 million civilian workers — roughly 106 in private industry and 19 million in state or local governments.

Companies’ answers to questions about areas such as health-care coverage, paid sick leave and retirement benefits in turn become part of the Labor Department’s National Compensation Survey. Answers are collected quarterly from a sample that rotates during a five-year span.

The report out Wednesday is just the first cut at the benefits picture in March. A more comprehensive look at the findings — including short-term and long-term disability benefits — is slated to be published in the fall.

A long-term perspective shows only slight changes in aspects of health benefits during the past decade. The share of businesses offering benefits moved down to 61% in 2012 from 66% in 1999, according to the latest annual employer survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the American Hospital Association. Almost all large businesses — ones with 200 or more workers — offered health benefits, while 61% of firms with between three and 199 workers — offered them, according to the Kaiser survey. Changes in the overall rate hinge mostly on very small businesses with between three and nine employees. In 2012, half of such firms offered benefits.

While the share of businesses offering health benefits hasn’t changed dramatically in more than a decade, the same can’t be said of health-insurance premiums.

“The average premium is up 85% in the past 10 years,” said Gary Claxton, a Kaiser vice president and director of the Health Care Marketplace Project. He added, “One thing we know is that a lower percent of the population is getting its benefits through work.”

The Kaiser survey found minimal shifts over time in how workers and employers divvy up those premiums. Workers covered by single plans paid 14% of the premium in 1999; by 2012, that had climbed to 18%. For family plans, the worker’s share of the premium stood at 27% in 1999 and 28% in 2012.

The Labor Department report Wednesday showed that in March, workers chipped in 19% of premiums on single plans and 31% of premiums on family plans — both unchanged from March 2012.

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